AI continues dismissals, derecognises unions

Air India’s (AI) management and staff unions are again set for collision, with the former today declaring derecognition of the two unions involved in the two-day strike which had ended last evening.

AI’s management also dismissed 41 members of the two unions today, taking the number of sacked employees since yesterday to 58. It also suspended nine employees. It had suspended 15 engineers yesterday. Never before has AI terminated the services of so many staffers at one go.

The unions — Air Corporations Employees Union (ACEU), representing the lower-level ground handling staff, and the All India Aircraft Engineers Association (AIAEA) — had gone on a flash strike in protest against an order to not give media interviews in the wake of last week’s air crash in Mangalore.

In response, AIAEA said it would again go on strike from June 12. ACEU was in discussion till late evening on its response. “We will deal with the (derecognition) issue legally and will not go on strike on this issue,” Dinakar Shetty, ACEU president, said.

The state-owned carrier mentioned the flash strike and violations of the ‘Code of Discipline’ for its derecognition order. “One of the most objectionable actions of AIAEA was that in breach of office order dated July 27, 2009, it approached the media, criticising the systems and procedures of the company,” Air India said in a statement.

In another statement later, the airline said it had invited representatives of all unions for a meeting on June 1. “The management intends to communicate through the office bearers of the unions the actual reasons leading to the present situation.”

This is the second time in the airline’s history that a union has been derecognised. In 2003, the Indian Pilots Guild, a pilots union of the erstwhile Air India (when Indian Airlines had not merged with it) was derecognised after it protested at its members being asked to fly to countries in the grip of the SARS epidemic. The union was recognised again in 2009.

In 1974, three functionaries of the Indian Pilots Guild — S S Nadkarni, D S Mathur and H S Hirani — had been dismissed by Air India over introduction of the ‘slip system’ of duty and the abolishing of the bases in London and New York. At the time, the legendary J R D Tata was chairman.

The two-day strike had resulted in over 100 flights getting cancelled, both domestic and international. The estimated loss was Rs 12 crore. It was called off yesterday after an order to this effect by the High Court in Delhi and the crackdown by the management, with firm Union government backing.